Ayman Hafez

Last night at ProductTank London we heard from 4 different speakers on the topic of Product Culture. My key takeaway is this... 'Good' product culture lacks definition. You might read about the importance of product culture, or ask about it when interviewing. You may even try to evaluate how good or bad the product culture is at your company. But here's the bottom line: product culture 𝘪𝘴𝘯'𝘵 something that you'll usually find written down, like you would a strategy, a roadmap, or a vision. Hearing someone describe it will inherently be biased. Product culture is the shared values, beliefs, behaviours, and practices that shape a team, org, or company's identity. It changes when you change your beliefs, behaviours, and practices. Not satisfied with the product culture at your company? You're more empowered to change it than you might think. How have you gone about improving product culture at your company?

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I frequently hear Exec teams simultaneously claiming “Customer focus”, whilst avoiding talking with their customers. 🤔 Establishing the practice of user research at the top-most level enables a culture of customer focus throughout the organisation. Some of the biggest breakthroughs I've witnessed as part of a leadership team have resulted from the whole C-level spending a couple of hours meeting with real customers. Examples: - Finding our customers have an alternate use case for our product - Realising who our real competitors are - Discovering a new channel where our customers are engaged - Understanding the real connection between our pricing and customer actions - Uncovering features/UX being used in an unexpected way

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Let's address the elephant in the room: yes, there are bubbles in the LLM space 🫧. However, I believe we're still a few years away from seeing them burst. The reason? We're in a phase where LLM capabilities are advancing rapidly 🚀, and their real-world applications are just beginning to take shape (other than chatbot). The coming years will be critical in determining how far scaling laws can truly take us and in separating genuine innovations from mere hype. In this context, OpenAI's upcoming GPT-5 release is poised to be a pivotal moment for the industry 🔍. On a related note, there's been talk about Nvidia's potentially inflated market cap 📈. While there's merit to this discussion, it's crucial to differentiate Nvidia's situation from past tech bubbles. Take Cisco, for instance. While Cisco invented networking, Nvidia has constructed something potentially far more enduring. The moat they've built with CUDA and its surrounding ecosystem might well be one of the most defensible positions in the tech industry today 🏰 – far surpassing the impact of proprietary protocols like EIGRP. However, I think the real long-term threat for Nvidia comes from a different direction. Foundation model companies might start building their own chipsets, similar to Google's TPU (Groq's LPU is also an interesting one) . These companies are likely becoming wary of Nvidia getting richer and richer given the growing computing power required for model training. This shift could potentially disrupt Nvidia's stronghold in the AI hardware space. It would be interesting to hear everyone's thoughts on this 🤔

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I’ve been at lots of events recently and I’ve noticed speakers etc fueling a trope: “product management didn’t exist 15 years ago”. As someone who became a product manager in the nineties, I’d discourage this thinking as it under-values what our job is actually about. I was fortunate to spend eight years learning from leaders who were part of an MBO from Lotus. We built award winning, highly profitable enterprise software, but mostly on CD-ROMs. Consequently we didn't have AB testing, fake door tests, CI/CD or HotJar. But we did have sales-led pressures, prioritisation conflicts, remote teams, pricing complexity and disruptive new market entrants. What we also had was a passion to understand the customer’s pains and to then design and deliver something that was commercially valuable that addressed it. My wife works in FMCG, where for decades brand managers have been uncovering insights, then working with manufacturing, supply chain and sales & marketing to delight customers and create business value. That’s product management. Our tools, frameworks, product books and our understanding are ever evolving. And the enormous benefits of online deployment all mean that for many the job is done very differently now than it was in the nineties. But the business basics remain as they always have done. Especially for the very many product managers who aren’t solely working just with digital solutions. I bring this up not to defend those of us with grey hair (or little hair, in my case). My concern is that AI will be a paradigm shift to rival the upgrade from CD-ROM to Internet, and that may frighten some. Your future self will have Copilot instantly whip up a prototype, test it on synthetic personas leveraging mountains of sentiment data, and a Monte Carlo simulation will present you with your best options, in a compelling doc/ppt created by an LLM. But it's just another tool change, and another set of ways to better understand the opportunity, leverage the art of the possible and de-risk getting to a good commercial outcome at even faster rates. A peer has chosen to re-train as a carpenter because they've realised they're at heart a problem solver, and the context isn’t relevant. So please don’t think your super-power comes solely from being current on the tools and techniques of how you do your trade today. Product management has always been necessary and always will be, even if AI creates another shift in the technology, techniques and the pace of the work. #productmanagement

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What makes a great Product Manager? I’m at the end of week 7 of what is now my 5th Product role across 4 companies and as I plan what I’ll need to be successful in this new role, I’m reflecting on what I think makes a great Product Manager. For the record, this isn’t just based on what I’ve done, but also heavily on high performing peers I’m lucky enough to/have worked with. I also asked ChatGPT the same question. It came back with a helpful, but somewhat overwhelming response of 13 different items. I prefer things a little simpler, so I’m going to play with the following 3 items as I look for success in the near future. 1. Know you’re working on the right thing - I could have said “work on the right thing” but “knowing” you’re working on the right thing is critical, it requires validation and can apply to almost all decision big or small. Yes ChatGPT, customer centric mindset, strategic vision, data-driven, market knowledge, collaboration are all important, but really they are tools to know whether you’re working on the right thing. 2. Be great at driving action - knowing what to do is great, but can you make it happen? This becomes incredibly nuanced because different products, situations and problems may require very different approaches, or just subtle changes to your approach. It can also require having difficult conversations and saying that thing that no one else wants to address, but if you know you’re working the right thing AND you can make it happen, then surely that’s where the success is? 3. Be great at engaging the people around you - to make things happen as a Product Manager you never do things on your own, you always need help from others around. So I see this as crucial in supporting 1 & 2. These people could be peers, stakeholders, direct reports or anyone else. I feel it pays dividends to invest time in the person, not the job they do and truly engage with people on a day to day basis. Speaking personally, as I reflect on previous roles, it’s the people I remember far more than the work we did. Yes there are a myriad of specific skills, tools and knowledge that you need to facilitate the above, but I hope by constantly bringing things back to these fundamental, it’ll set me up for success going forward. What do you think makes a great product manager?

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Your product organisation is immature? 3 problems - 3 solutions: Problems I hear often: 1) no clarity on goals 2) no product vision 3) no customer insights Solutions to start with: 1) do a product audit 2) have a vision document 3) run customer interviews AUDITS reveal where your products are at. show if goals are aligned to business uncover what’s broken VISION define the product keep everyone aligned check if the product matches the vision? INTERVIEWS uncover what people really need help you speak their language get you new insights Do the above for 4 weeks. See the difference. Need in-depth support? DM me. PS: what is your org struggling with?

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I would zoom out a bit. A/b testing is just a side effect of following a scientific approach to building a business and product. Not everything I worked on at Booking.com was an a/b test. We still needed to find a way to validate each hypothesis. Still don’t copy Booking’s playbook blindly. There are more nuances that make this approach successful. Your business might be operating under different constraints and context that requires a different playbook.

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How have I not read this before?! Insightful, informal and peppered with great advice for product professionals and anyone hoping to build great products and businesses. Whilst not all of it was new it was great to be reminded that at work ‘there are two things that matter: products and people, what you build and who you build it with.’ #buildgreatproducts #productinspiration #productbooks

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🗣️'A Product-Led culture. The business must be able to demonstrate that is has or is very actively working towards having a Product-Led culture'.🗣️ Something taken from a conversation one of the Product Directors in my network this morning, after asking her what some of the non negotiables in her job search might look like. But what exactly is a Product-Led culture? Is it a business that: 🟣Has a clear product strategy and vision? 🟣Has a focus on customer-centric product development? 🟣Is using data to drive decisions?  🟣Has buy in from C-Suite/Executive leaders who are willing to invest in product excellence? Product professionals in my network, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. How would you define a Product-Led culture, and would you be hesitant about joining a business where this was missing? #productledculture

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The goal of MyJobInFinTech is to be the OS for finding a career in FinTech—whether you're breaking into the industry or making your next big move. Today is an exciting day as you can now access and compare salary data for many leading FinTech companies. Read more about it below!

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We can automate government and save billions on bureaucrat pay! Just tell one LLM to argue for something and never agree to the other side and tell the other LLM to argue the other side. Every few months, have a random atrocity generator pick a winner on an issue and make it law. Then have the losing LLM spend years fighting the winning one on that issue. Now that all the politicians have been replaced, they'll need good American jobs that they champion so we can put them to work in the coal mines making energy to feed the LLMs. #ai #government

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There are very few people who have scaled products to 10’s of millions of people. Mike Hudack has done that multiple times at multiple different companies. 🏦 Building Britain’s biggest bank Monzo Bank 🍽️ Feeding millions of people Deliveroo 💰 Serving $BNs of truffle oil ads leading ads Facebook My 5 key takeaways 👇 1. The Real Art of Product - It’s to understand what people want. - Your job is to help them achieve that with the minimal amount of work. - A good product does not need tons of buttons that can do everything. 2. Facebook Used Vending Machines to Save Productivity - We had vending machines all over the office with free headphones, laptops, etc. - They understood your time should be spent on coding. - Spending a couple hundred dollars on equipment is worth it. 3. The Structure of Every Product Team - They should be between 6-8 people: - Most should be engineers - 1 data scientist - 1 designer - PM is optional. 4. There is No Room for Nice to Have  - The cost will always be higher, and the value will always be lower than expected. - We tried to build audience insights at Facebook as a nice to have. - It took an enormous amount of technology, and we could have spent that time building something more valuable. 5. The Secret to Success is Low Expectations - I always tell my team they should put their best foot forward, but keep their expectations low. - If it works, they are happy and forget they ever had low expectations. - If it doesn’t, they are emotionally prepared to fix it. (links in comments) #founder #funding #business #investing #vc #venturecapital #entrepreneur #startup #seed #funding

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Hey people! You can message me to learn more about the first hand experience and apply

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Get good at writing. It's not good enough to just tell potential hires what you are / do. You need to show them. Everyone knows Monzo Bank ** right?, let's use them as an example here: Instead of this: 😐 "Market leading Fintech company" Try this: 🙂 "Statistically, 1 of the 7 dwarves would have used our stuff. (We bet it's the happy one!) We currently help 7.5m users, or 1/7th of the UK's adult population with their money!" Instead of this: 😐"Disruptive Fintech organisation" Try this: 🙂 "Money has been the same since 10,000BC (That's when coins became a thing!) and we think it's time for a change (change...get it... *facepalm*). We're building a new kind of bank, a better bank, built for today. Instead of this: 😐 "Financially stable" Try this: 🙂 "Imagine being a bank and being useless at money. Most are, but we're not. We've raised £840m to help us build the best teams and platforms possible." As the adage goes, it's not what you say... it's how you say it. **PS. Monzo Bank are class at marketing, I just used them as most people know who they are! Data taken from: https://lnkd.in/eDJUcAda Give us a follow 👉 Hiiya

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Yesterday was another brilliant day as our momentum continues to build! 💻 A team at the BBC has started trialing our software for a 2 year contract, and was putting it through its paces. They discovered a function we clearly need but haven't built yet, so my day kicked off with me replicating that function manually! Fortunately our early tech is already so slick and fast (shoutout to Dharmil, Pooja, Bhaskar, Vidhi) that the manual workaround took less than 5 mins & didn't require any code changes. 🎙️ I immediately jumped into recording another podcast with the awesome Greg Mccallum. I'm the first guest to return for a second recording, and there was so much to share on our updated story, we had a great long chat. Greg - when's the recording due to come out? 👋 Followed that with a load of chats with potential partners and investors, including 2 people who contacted me about investing, as a direct result of my post on Tuesday! 💡 In amongst those calls, I got a bunch of feedback from my group of early SuperScout beta testers including Oliver Laurenson-Gore Joseph Ferreira Campos Alex Brooks and others on what taglines would interest fellow location scouts & managers. ✉️ In very little time after hearing their thoughts, I managed to put two of their taglines into a blog post about SuperScout.ai that was posted to The Location Guide last night and will be emailed to 1000s of potential users today! (will put the link in comments) 📽️ Lastly I had the pleasure of catching up with Calvin Mays who I hadn't spoken to since I showcased the first version of SuperScout at Berlin Film Festival in February! 😍 And after all that, my wife returned home after her last work trip for a while, and we finished the night off with an episode of Taskmaster (season 9)! All in all, a wild but very fun day!! #startup #founder #locations #fundraising #beta

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Guess what: Product Management is tough. Shocker - just like the sky is blue and politicians lie. 😮 But the toll the role takes on our mental health can be huge, and we are all starting to come to terms with this. 🧠 I have been honoured to share with Alex Elliott at Recruited some of the common factors associated with poor wellbeing in product professionals, pointers to help both ICs and their managers create positive environments, and why I created the Product Mind Community. 💪 Enjoy

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Agree with Aakash Gupta's perspective on the power of portfolios. Resumes are super dry, LI profiles all look the same. 😐 A portfolio allows you to express your story, style, and aesthetic in a way that shows your personality. 😎 Plus when you build the foundation and keep it rolling - it is so much easier than trying to go back and remember all the great work you did. 🏅

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A few shorts from this talk: #1: https://lnkd.in/g_4daXWN (see comment for #2)

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The framework is very powerful and I believe it should be read by every new product manager.

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